Tariq ibn Ziyad

Tariq ibn Ziyad led the force that crossed into Spain in 711 and destroyed the Visigothic kingdom in a single campaigning season, and the rock he landed under carries a corruption of his name to this day: Jabal Tariq, Gibraltar. He was a Berber, probably a freedman of the Umayyad governor of Ifriqiya, Musa ibn Nusayr, which is worth stating plainly because the conquest of Spain was carried out overwhelmingly by recently converted Berbers under Arab command rather than by Arabs. He crossed with perhaps 7,000 men, ferried over in merchant ships belonging to a Visigothic count who had his own quarrel with the king. Roderic was in the north fighting the Basques when he heard, and came south with an army that ought to have been sufficient. They met near the Guadalete river in July 711, and the Visigothic wings - commanded by supporters of the dynasty Roderic had displaced - left the field or changed sides, and the army collapsed. Tariq then ignored his instructions to wait and drove north instead, taking Cordoba, Toledo and the royal treasury within months. Musa crossed the following year with a larger Arab force, and the two men quarrelled bitterly over precedence and plunder; one tradition has Musa publicly flogging him. Both were recalled to Damascus in 714 by the caliph and neither returned to Spain. The famous speech in which he is said to have burned his ships and told his men the sea was behind them and the enemy in front is recorded 400 years later and is almost certainly invention. He disappears from the record entirely after 720.

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